Live data from Hacker News

Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

slate.com

81–90 of 90 posts

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#81
post #38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a fairly settled issue in social science, though, that abstinence-only sex ed doesn't work. So? The alternative to abstinence-only sex ed isn't perfection, it's a bunch of stuff that doesn't work all that well either. Your links are all behind paywalls. That said, they're probably just like the other work on the subject. Their "measure of success" is curious at best. (No, reducing teen pregnancy isn't the only…

> As to "telling teaching inaccuracies", no other teaching is held to that standard, so why is abstinence-only sex ed held to that standard? Because kids going around with misconceptions about what really caused the American Revolution is less dangerous than kids going around with misconceptions about reproductive issues.

> Because kids going around with misconceptions about what really caused the American Revolution is less dangerous than kids going around with misconceptions about reproductive issues.

Umm, if it doesn't matter whether it is true, why are we teaching it?

And no, sex ed isn't the only dangerous thing that we mis-teach kids about.

But, thanks for demonstrating your priorities.

However, I'm still unclear on why I should be paying for them.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#82
post #63
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now let me guess. You don't believe in evolution, Wrong. > Evolution matters to geology because specific fossils are often used as a cross-reference for the age of specific rocks. Evolution doesn't tell you how old a fossil is. Evolution says that there's a path, but doesn't say how long each step took. > There are also applications of fossils to astronomy, for instance fossil corals have been used to verify how th…

Evolution tells you that a fossil of a given type cannot be older than ancestral types, and is unlikely to be younger than descendant types. That sandwiches the age fairly nicely. But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. And even put approximate dates on the co…

> But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past.

Evolution did no such thing.

I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way....

> The detailed study of ant behavior was undertaken exactly because evolutionary theory predicted specific behavior.

Actually, it doesn't (there are non-slaver ants, so if their behavior is also evolutionary, you have evolution predicting X and not-X).

> Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding.

The claim was that evolution was necessary to predict something. If said something can be predicted by other means, evolution is not necessary.

As I've written before, I believe in evolution, but most of the arm-chair supporters offer false arguments.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#83
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a little silly. Intelligent people could easily vote for the candidate of the party that is toughest on public-sector unions for one office and the candidate who is most supportive of a carbon tax for another office, believing both that public sector unions and their pension commitments are out of control and in anthropogenic global warming, and make those choices dependent on the impact those beliefs have on…

The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time. So why the hell would you vote Republican if you were against the pensions?

> The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time.

What are you babbling about? Public employees weren't unionized in the 60s and early 70s.

And, the pension stuff started in the 90s.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#84
post #36
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does following the scientific consensus on issues like anthropogenic global warming, evolution, and sex education make you a Democrat?

> Does following the scientific consensus on issues like anthropogenic global warming, evolution, and sex education make you a Democrat? The correlation is with misunderstanding all three and coming to bogus conclusions. Let's take evolution. There are lots of folks, typically Democrats, who insist that it is fundamental to all of science. (Hint - that's clearly false. Disagree? How does evolution matter outside biol…

Are you being deliberately obtuse? The reason prospective parents trying to conceive are told to keep a "positive mental attitude" is because it can be a long, frustrating process, and it doesn't help if you're too frustrated to want sex.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#85
post #82
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution tells you that a fossil of a given type cannot be older than ancestral types, and is unlikely to be younger than descendant types. That sandwiches the age fairly nicely. But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. And even put approximate dates on the co…

> But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. Evolution did no such thing. I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way.... > The detailed study of ant behav…

Evolution did no such thing.

I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way....

Actually evolution did predict that.

The earliest example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line which was named after Alfred Russel Wallace who independently discovered the theory of evolution.

This line indicates, based on the distribution of related species today, what islands were connected with Asia in the last versus which other nearby ones weren't. The line was drawn before fossil data or underwater topography could confirm or explain the past connection. Without the hypothesis that similar species are similar because they share a recent ancestor, this data on extant species would not have lead to any conclusions.

Moving forward, in decades after evolution and before plate tectonics, there were many examples of scientists drawing connections between once connected masses based on related species - but not the same species in both places. For instance both India and Madagascar contain rich lemur fossils that are different but clearly related. That relation was explained by a past land mass called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_(continent). The conclusion was incorrect, but it is true that Indian and Madagascar once were connected and did exchange fauna, including lemurs.

Actually, it doesn't (there are non-slaver ants, so if their behavior is also evolutionary, you have evolution predicting X and not-X).

You clearly have failed to understand the example.

Ants generally feed female larvae something like 3x as much as they feed male larvae. (I think the ratio is 3 to 1, but this is pulled from a course 20 years ago, and I can't swear to that figure.) Wilson came up with an evolutionary explanation for this. Based on this explanation HE PREDICTED that if the queen was in control of the care of the young, this discrepancy would disappear. Slaver ants provide a test case, because (at least in some species) the queen does control the behavior of the slaves.

In slaver ants he found, AS PREDICTED BY THEORY, that when the queen was in charge (ie there were slaves), male larvae received as much food as female larvae. But when a slaver colony had no slaves, they revert to the typical 3 to 1 ratio that is common among ants.

There is no X and not-X. There is behavior when queen is in control versus behavior when workers are in control. Non-slaver ants differ from slavers in that the workers are always in control of care of the larvae.

> Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding.

The claim was that evolution was necessary to predict something. If said something can be predicted by other means, evolution is not necessary.

Scroll back. Your demand was, "Name three things in biology that were predicted using evolution?" This is, in fact, an example that was predicted using evolution. The existence of other possible explanations does not change the fact that evolution was, in fact, used to predict this particular thing.

As I've written before, I believe in evolution, but most of the arm-chair supporters offer false arguments.

This is true of most topics. A lot of armchair supporters know the orthodoxy, but do not understand it and cannot defend it. People believe in all sorts of alternative theories usually have an easy time dispatching these armchair supporters because while they are wrong in a big way, they actually know more than the armchair supporters do.

But I would like to believe that I know more about evolution than the average armchair supporter. After all your average armchair supporter hasn't done things like audit a graduate seminar about evolution theory. :-)

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the meme "reality has a well-known liberal bias". I don't know or suspect whether that's true or not. But I have noticed personally in life that whenever someone is both intelligent, educated, is compassionate/empathic and does long-term thinking, that person also seems to be "liberal", progressive or left-leaning, politics wise. Perhaps not always. But most of the time, based on my observations. I thin…

What would you say about the tens of millions of Americans who are educated, religious, and give hundreds of millions of dollars to build schools, clinics, and missions around the world? Are they short-sighted or lacking compassion? I think this kind of binary political thinking is the most insidious thought virus we face. Far more dangerous than whether or not someone believes in evolution, because it separates us a…

You write as if you've somehow refuted or contradicted my words, but you haven't. I recommend looking again, more closely, at what I said. I choose words carefully.

But I do understand the idea that religious people can be compassionate and give money away. So can atheists. So can intelligent people. So can both more and less educated people. It's orthogonal. And I never cited religion. And I was speaking in general terms based on direct, personal observation. Also I for one do not engage in "binary" political thinking -- not when I'm actually thinking internally -- though it's often useful when speaking in order to average out details and identify patterns and then express them concisely in public conversation.

And as an additional point, if by 'mission' you mean a religious mission, then I'd say that I don't consider that to be a good thing. It's a bad thing. It spreads superstition, fear, make believe, childish mental states, obedience to arbitrary authority, silly rituals and fuzzy irrational thinking. Yes it also teaches relaxing and addictive chants and tunes, and feel good phrases. And the good parts, anything dealing with peace, compassion, charity, with community interaction, can all be done without the negative that comes from the religious baggage attached to it. Also, like your complaint about binary thinking being a bad thing. I don't think education is a binary quality. You're not either educated or not. There are many intermediate degrees and shades of grey, and types. So while I do think someone can be somewhat educated and religious, I don't think they're extremely well educated or intelligent. At least not both. Otherwise one would see that that particular emperor wears no clothes. But of course this is just the conclusion reached by many of us, not all of us. To each his own.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say about the tens of millions of Americans who are educated, religious, and give hundreds of millions of dollars to build schools, clinics, and missions around the world? Are they short-sighted or lacking compassion? I think this kind of binary political thinking is the most insidious thought virus we face. Far more dangerous than whether or not someone believes in evolution, because it separates us a…

You write as if you've somehow refuted or contradicted my words, but you haven't. I recommend looking again, more closely, at what I said. I choose words carefully. But I do understand the idea that religious people can be compassionate and give money away. So can atheists. So can intelligent people. So can both more and less educated people. It's orthogonal. And I never cited religion. And I was speaking in general…

Yes. Precisely. It's orthogonal. Like compassion and conservatism or short-term thinking and liberalism. Honestly, I disagree that those things are at all related. I think that's the sort of thing you get in political echo chambers, but not in reality.

I meant mission more in the sense of centers intended to relieve poverty, hunger, etc, but it is a word with different meanings, so I see your take on it as well.

I do think, though, that if you think belief in religion is a matter of whether the emperor has any clothes that you're looking at it wrong. There are deeper meanings and purposes to faith that many intelligent and well-educated people choose to pursue. They aren't doing it blindly, they know what they're doing, and they have their reasons.

I'm strongly agnostic (to the point of being ridiculous about it), but I've encountered a wide enough variety of religious people to respect their views.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#88
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time. So why the hell would you vote Republican if you were against the pensions?

Is that a serious question? Scott Walker is a Republican, not a Democrat. Also, the GOP of 2012 bears little relationship to the GOP of 1965. Barry Goldwater was practically on the fringe of the 1960's GOP. What party would Nelson Rockefeller belong to in 2012? You can vote a specific interest, you can vote a straight party line, you can vote out of ignorance. But one thing that makes zero sense is to vote party-line…

It's not about punishing one party for the past, it's about which party would be most likely to make future spending commitments without raising taxes now to pay for them. (Probably the one that's been doing it consistently for the past 50 years and is campaigning on a platform of doing it now.)

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#89
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time. So why the hell would you vote Republican if you were against the pensions?

> The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time. What are you babbling about? Public employees weren't unionized in the 60s and early 70s. And, the pension stuff started in the 90s.

Yes they were. They were unionized under the '60s Republican governors.
Post reply on HN